September 30th 2015- FRAGMENTS from the GARDEN of DREAMS – with Sasha Waters Freyer

Filmmaker Sasha Waters Freyer in person
for discussion about her films

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TRT: 90 minutes
FRAGMENTS from the GARDEN of DREAMS – SEPTEMBER 30, curated by Lili White:

REVERIES; Karissa Hahn; USA; 3.33; B & W Super 8 MM to digi Charlotte Pryce is teaching by candlelight. I’m picking at my thumb under the table. She’s speaking with thumbs unpicked: “We don’t see an object, we see the effluence of that object. We see a light lingering in our eye because it works faster than our brain. This implies that we may invent what we see.” She’s now telling of Aristotle, of how he believed; The organs > not just the eye > retains the image. The sensations are retained and return to haunt the sleep. “Bodies are vessels that take in images. Can we not see ghosts because our eye lags perception and we miss it? Are ghosts a perception of speed?”…. I’m picking my thumb to the bone over this.

VED’MA; Cornelia Eichhorn; FRANCE; TRT: 14 minutes ; digi; Cast: Mélodie Etxeandia, Elodie Grech, Louise Kalfo, Marion Maugein, Irène Ranson, Leïla Richou, Catherine Zimmermann, Roxane Lebrun; Director of Photography: Etienne Saldes; Sound: Thibault Petolat; Editing: Raphaël Andrieu; Music: endemic project; Soundscape: Agathe Courtin; Assistant director: Mathilde Marc; Production Design: Stéphane Chapus, Marie Cuvillier, Griet Devis, Alice Jacob- Garnier; VED’MA is an ancient Russian word, which meant, witch in old Russian, today it means old mare. This title remains ambiguous between fascination and rejection, as are the characters of the film. VED’MA uses three-screens to tell the stories of three women simultaneously intertwined. They could be the same woman at three different stages of her life, sisters or three generations. The stories are perverted modern- fairy-tale stereotypes of women without a happy-ending questioning identity, generation and motherhood. These metaphor question relationships: Who influences whom? Who depends on whom? How do weperceive the other? Who manipulates whom? Who guides us, who serves us as a role model, as an ideal? It’s an eternal quest, which is perpetrated from one generation to the other.

GARDEN OF STONE; Sasha Waters Freyer; USA/ITALY; 4.15; digi A kaleidoscope of sights and sounds from Noto, Sicily, known as the Garden of Stone in honor of its baroque architecture (none of which you will see in this 4 minute film). A love letter to Peter Greenaway. in three rhythmic intervals.

YOU CAN SEE THE SUN IN LATE DECEMBER; Sasha Waters Freyer ; USA; 6.40; digi Beautiful emptiness, anguish and calm, absence rendered visible and traces of presence in the winter light, all intensified by the damned (non) question of maternity. Filming every frigid day in the final month as a strategy for overcoming deflated motivation.

(DREAM) OF A DISTANT LAND; Muriel Montini; FRANCE; 10.00; digi Fragments of a film, fragments of a summer.

ISLAND STORY; Alisa Berger; GERMANY; TRT: 6.18; 8mm & Super 8 to digi A grainy vintage-like feel permeates the alien world and mixes in with the mixtures with the assumed real world. – Jaqueline Valencia – Thesegirlsonfilm.com Blindingly and like a Martian horizon, the sun plays with the viewer’s stability. A narrator gives the account of a strange tale of a couple on a transformative journey into a world of paradise with no language. Animalistic gesticulations and instinctive expression emanate from the body until both of them grow apart and then into other versions of themselves, never to be the same again.

FRENCH WORDS; Heather Brown; Translator; Soline Pillet; Improvised Monologue: Kat Palardy USA; 2.45; 8mm & Super 8 to digi Super 8 film footage conjures up a sequence of frustrating attempts that are absurd. An orange is mutilated in a struggle with tools that do not seem to “work.” What is trying to be accomplished with the fruit is not clear, and neither are the words of a voicemail heard in French. The absent subtitles and translation is important to the piece in order to convey an absurd interaction and the inability to relate through language alone. The film ends with the song, “Roller Girl”, performed by Anna Karina in 1967. Her personal life is publicly documented: “Karina and Godard married on 3 March 1961, during the shooting of A WOMAN IS A WOMAN, and divorced in 1965. Their relationship is said to have been rocky for most of its course, with Anna left emotionally unstimulated by Godard’s obsession with work. By 1967, they were barely on speaking terms.” The film was originally inspired by a short, RILKE ELEGIES, created by Audra Brandt. Kat Palardy, actress and performer, was asked to create and improvise a two minute monologue. Without any direction, she fabricated a recording of a voicemail message that was ttranslated and performed by Soline Pillet.

PI KA CHU; Valérie Pelet; thanks to: Fabian Knierim, Bastian Schwind, Christian Kurz, Magdalena Pfeifer, Marko Lipus, filmkoop, labo d’ images, Nathalie Pelet; Music: John Deneuve Austria / France; TRT: 6:44; 16MM to digi PI KA CHU is the title of an experimental 16mm film project, which has been realised with a group of children from the district of Floridsdorf in Vienna. The film is both a playful rehearsal and an ode to the realm of childhood as well as to a cinema, which embraces this very topic. The opening scene shows the casting of a girl, one of the children from the local school in Floridsdorf. A rhythmical montage subsequently presents a collection of the most diverse children’s plays, ranging from the traditional to the contemporary, from elaborate group activities to more individual and confined games, from counting-out rhymes to up to date songs and rhythms. Underpinned by repetitive voice-over-sequences, a pulsating and absorbing narrative stream unfolds like a carefully woven pattern.

ASSUMPTIONS OF YOUR PHANTOM(sy); Karissa Hahn USA; 1.53; Super 8 to digi The glorious nature of a phantom-like entity, in the midst of vulnerability.

MOONBOW THIEF; Sara Bonaventura; ITALY; 4.46; Sound: field recordings- Dolomites Carnival, Balinesian Barong and Kali dance The question of language and its limits is at stake. The overall carnivalesque tones are seeds for a new polyphonic text (in the sense Mikhail Bakhtin intended it). The death of a speech could be the birth of a language: ero muto tumore (I was a dumb tumor). It is not the thief’s voice. It is an “essential palindrome” (Agamben Giorgio, Il cinema di Guy Debord).

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Filmmaker Sasha Waters Freyer will join us in person
on OCTOBER 14 for discussion!

After an internet flaming episode in the film community, on FRAMWORKS List Serve, Sasha was invited to be AXW’s guest curator for her show TRY a LITTLE TENDERNESS

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